Like, would we have to beef up immigration rules to prevent people coming to Canada for the "free-money"?

Could a guaranteed minimum income be used as an excuse to cut really deeply from socal programs across the board, such as CPP and medicare?

How old would you be before you started to collect the dough? $7000 a year is a heck of a lot of money to a teenager.

The ground's been covered, but I'll just sketch out how a GAI would likely work:

Every existing income support program (EI, CPP, OAS, welfare, you name it) gets folded into the GAI. So you wipe out a huge provincial bureaucracy (the Social Services people) and put the load onto the existing EI-HRDC bureaucracy), and you create a system whereby anybody who makes less than a certain cut-off (call it $15,000 a year) gets checks to bring them up to this level.

Milton Friedman (surprise, surprise, that old bastard actually has ONE good idea) invented a form of this, called a Negative Income Tax. Couldn't get it past Richard Nixon or Congress back in the 1970s and he got all fixated on inflation since then.

The GAI would be a permanent non-time-limited birthright of any Canadian. Personally, if I knew I could get a guaranteed income support of that much, I'd have zero problems with going right back to university, since student loans would only be needed to cover tuition and books.

First of all, our immigration system is already set up to force new immigrants into the lowest income and labour positions our society has to offer. They already give immigrants points based on how high their level of education and potential productivity is, and then when doctors and other professionals get here they find they're driving cabs and cleaning toilets because they can't get certified.

Not only that, but this happens a lot more to people from countries where the majority of the population is people of colour (e.g. South Asia, Africa, etc.) because licensing boards are much more likely to recognize educations from "white" countries like those of Europe and the US. People of colour in Toronto actually have higher levels of education and much lower income and lower status jobs. Our immigration system and employment system is very racist in this way.

So I don't think we will have to beef up immigration policies at all. Immigration already has a point system in order to keep out unskilled immigrants. If Canada would actually let skilled immigrants WORK in their fields, we wouldn't have to worry about guaranteeing a minimum income for them.

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and then when doctors and other
professionals get here they find they're driving cabs and cleaning toilets because they can't get certified.

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What the hell makes you think that decertification of the medical or any other proffession is a good idea? When I or my family have to go to the doctor I want to know that the doctor has been certified as capable from a board that basis those decisions on a standard. Not someone who got a witch doctor credit through mail order or printed up their own.

As far as racist goes I am laughing.
Why is it that people from all over the world come to Canada and the U.S. for medical treatment? Not because we have only white doctors (they do come in all colours you know) but because we have the best medical research and abilities in the world.

I never said anything about decertification of doctors. The problem isn't that the doctors can't PASS the exam. The problem is getting ACCESS to the exam. From what I understand, the Ontario Medical Association (I think that's the correct name) only allows a very small number (something like 20 but I don't know the exact number) of foreign-trained doctors to take either the certification test or residency requirements necessary to get their license.

And there are other fields of study (like sociology, or economics, etc.) where people's educations from the largest accredited universities in many countries (which just so happen to have non-white populations) are downgraded by as many as two degrees (e.g. if you have a Ph.D. in something, you may get credit for a Bachelor's Degree). It's not just health sciences.

So does your argument mean that it's just a strange coincidence that people of colour, particularly immigrants, in Toronto have higher degrees of education and lower incomes than born Canadians and white immigrants? That, oddly enough, most people of colour just aren't qualified the way white people are?

Another thing - if new immigrants got here through the point system that Immigration has set up, you can bet that Immigration didn't accept a "witch doctor mail order degree". But I find it interesting that you would characterize university degrees from countries with non-white populations in that manner.

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Opportunities to enter postgraduate training programs in Canada are extremely limited for foreign-trained graduates of medical schools. A physician must hold a certificate of registration for postgraduate training, issued by this College, to be eligible.

One of the basic requirements for a certificate for postgraduate education is successful completion of the Medical Council of Canada Evaluating Examination. The physician must also have an official appointment to a training program at an Ontario medical school.

As a first step to enter into a residency program at an Ontario medical school, foreign-trained medical graduates who live in Ontario and who hold Canadian citizenship or landed immigrant status should apply to the Ontario International Medical Graduate Program. Successful completion of this program enables entry to a family medicine or other residency program in Ontario. Thirty-six physicians a year are given an opportunity to enter the International Medical Graduate Program.

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So rather than disputing this you feel calling someone stupid is the intelligent way to go?

"And there are other fields of study (like sociology, or economics, etc.) where people's educations from the largest accredited universities in many countries (which just so happen to have non-white populations) are downgraded by as many as two degrees (e.g. if you have a Ph.D. in something, you may get credit for a Bachelor's Degree)."

And this is why there is something called International Baccalaureate programs so that those who choose to work as a professional in other countries will be able to do so.

So let me ask you this. If someone goes through university to attain a Ph.D why would they move to a country knowing they will not be accredited rather than working toword that in their own country, where I am sure they need doctors too, or find a place near to them that can certify them so that they have a very good chance of making it here with our point system? Seems to me that working in your field would do more for you than working as a cab driver would.

Often what happens is that when one is on welfare and would like to work and can find a job he is better off on welfare, especially if there is a family involved. Dentist and medication cut. People are not fools and self esteem is fine but people do know how to count.

To Slick Willy:

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"Wow, that witch doctor comment really made you sound intelligent and informed." So rather than disputing this you feel calling someone stupid is the intelligent way to go?

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You're right. It was so much worse of me to say that your comment made you sound stupid than it was for you to call non-white immigrant professionals "mail order witch doctors."

For the record, I didn't say you are stupid. I said your racist characterization of non-white professionals as witch doctors made you SOUND stupid and ill-informed, and I stand by that. You may have noticed that I DID dispute your statement in the rest of that message. I have several friends who came to Canada as educated professionals and found out their degrees mean nothing here. They have enough hurdles to jump without being called racist epithets like "witch doctors" on top of it all.

You asked why they come here knowing that their educations will not be recognized. The answer is, they don't know that. Immigration officers neglect to tell them that when they're applying, and in fact they imply the opposite by trying to attract the most educated immigrants possible through the point system. If we go out of our way to attract them to come here, then why put up barriers to certifying them once they get here?

I do not believe that Canada should be the place to pay for everyone else's training. Training is different than certifying.

This IS linked to our conversation about guaranteed minimum income, because for many skilled immigrants in Canada, these may be the circumstances under which they may find themselves underemployed and needing a guaranteed annual income if one actually becomes established.

One of the arguments against GAI is that we'll attract a bunch of immigrants who will take advantage of our system. I was simply responding to this argument by saying there are already safeguards in place in the form of a points system, and that if we would stop erecting barriers to certification for professional immigrants, they would be no less likely to "take advantage" of the GAI system than born Canadians.

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I said your racist characterization
of non-white professionals as witch doctors made you SOUND stupid and ill-informed, and I stand by that.

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Oh Brother! I say decertification would lead to unqualified people opening up shop in Canada. So now I am a racist. Your not even close. There are plenty of quacks in the world and I see no reason to open the doors to let them prey on Canadians. If you move to another country and haven't the sense to know what it is your getting into then I figure you have no reason to even be in the country. Just try to explain to the Thai authorities that you didn't know that exporting drugs from their country was a bad thing.

Pause for hysterical laughter to die down.

Part of this is cultural. Our identity is bound up in what we "do". Even if you're a student in school, it's still something you "do".

But part of this is economic. A GAI is the first step in renewing the call for a more egalitarian society since it implies redistribution. Cliche as this may sound, but the simple fact is that the fat cats at the top think this is Bad Mojo.

SO, find 26 Qualified teachers who will sign on for a year and the rest should be easy. Hmmm what would the union say about that?

A question, for Willy and for everyone else: Do you believe that there is some direct connection between the amount you earn (down to the last penny we all feel so possessive about) and your, um, self? That is, most people get very tetchy about making their income public, but that implies that they somehow take what they earn personally, as though it actually said something about them personally. This strikes me as superstitious -- a peculiarly modern superstition. Votes?

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Willy, that's silly (the teachers' volunteering scenario) -- no one has a
responsibility to martyr him/herself unilaterally

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Our identities are bound up in what we "do". This is why there's still a very strong cultural shame attached to unemployment (which only gets worse during periods of chronic high unemployment, or during recessions).

In Europe, many post-secondary forms of schooling are heavily subsidized or free. Germany, I believe, is a commonly cited example where students are encouraged to take trades and/or technical training rather than simply go to the catch-all "university track" if they're not sure what it is they want to get out of higher schooling.

So the German strategy works to smooth out imbalances in the labor force by encouraging learning practical skills instead of simply fuzzily encouraging higher education in general.

I could go on and on

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In Europe, many post-secondary forms of schooling are heavily subsidized or free. Germany, I believe, is a commonly cited example where students are encouraged to take trades and/or technical training rather than simply go to the catch-all "university track" if they're not sure what it is they want to get out of higher schooling.

So the German strategy works to smooth out imbalances in the labor force by encouraging learning practical skills instead of simply fuzzily encouraging higher education in general.

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Good point. Another piece to this puzzle is the growing politically correct language and fear of reprisals for saying the right thing to the wrong person. We need carpenters just as much as we need doctors yet if you tell someone they would do better taking than they would farting around in med-school you would get slammed for it by some people. God help you if a white person said it to a "visable minority". Yet when you see someone of any colour making $25 an hour and driving a $35k truck while paying their way and carrying their share, you would consider them successful.

Essentially, something socially useful. But not to hammer this point home every day by some overbearing boss. Just let them learn it gradually, in their own way, by always putting them on projects that have a definite social good. It can even be something as boring as road construction.